By CHARLYNE BERENS
Alumni News editor
Joe, Sally and Tom, all freshmen, sit next to each other in their American government class. They cross paths again in their English composition class and their journalism today class. And they run into each other at the dorm and the dining hall.
Joe, Sally and Tom must be students at a small college, right? Everybody knows freshmen don’t go to the same classes together and live in the same dorm at a big institution like the University of Nebraska, right?
Wrong. Students like the mythical Joe, Sally and Tom are part of a learning community at NU. They’re part of a group that shares classes, informal study sessions, special activities and a residence hall.
The goal is to help students develop friendships and “catch the excitement of learning,” according to an NU brochure about university learning communities. In a learning community, a freshman automatically is part of a small group within the much larger campus community.
Kristin Chmelka, a member of the first journalism learning community, said it worked for her. Coming from the small Nebraska town of Bruno, Chmelka was a little apprehensive about attending the university. “I didn’t know what to look forward to,” she said.
But the opportunity to attend three classes with people she knows and to live with them in the residence hall and to get to know journalism professors Nancy Mitchell and Jerry Renaud both inside and outside class has been a good one, Chmelka said. “I feel like I’m one step ahead.”
Renaud and Mitchell said they thought the college’s first learning community, during the fall semester, was a success. Renaud, chairman of the broadcasting department, and Mitchell, chairwoman of the advertising department, volunteered to teach the journalism component of the community: the journalism today class. They chose the Nebraska gubernatorial election as the organizing theme for the course. That theme allowed the class to explore the relationship between politics and the media and how candidates get their messages to the voters, connecting with the content in each of the college’s three departments.
Renaud and Mitchell also planned out-of-class activities for the 24 students in the community. Those included a tour of HuskerVision, the video production arm of the athletic department, which produces big-screen video for football games at Memorial Stadium as well as coaches’ TV shows and sports highlight videos.
The professors also planned a career night at the learning community dorm. Faculty from each of the college’s three departments talked about how to get internships and jobs, and professionals from the community offered their advice.
The classes in common ended when the fall semester ended, but Mitchell and Renaud plan to continue some special activities into the spring.
The highlight will be a long weekend trip to Arlington, Va., in late January to visit The Freedom Forum’s Newseum. University Housing Services, official sponsor of the learning communities, and the college will underwrite the trip, keeping students’ costs low.
Ka’Ron Johnson, advertising major from Omaha and the student assistant for the men’s floor at the residence hall, said he thought the learning community had been a good experience for the freshmen who chose to be part of it. He said Mitchell and Renaud had done a lot to make it successful.
Even students who don’t live in the learning community dorm but do take the three classes think it’s been a good deal.
“I wanted to get connected early,” said Dannielle Stewart of Valley, an advertising major. “It’s great to go to classes together” and to have a chance to form friendships easily. Both she and Chmelka said they would encourage next year’s freshmen to join a learning community.
Stewart said after only a month on campus, she felt connected and at home. “I feel really lucky,” she said.